Great and informative review. It's made me want to buy one of these lickity split, but the whole thing about not being able to find one for sale online has really put a roadblock on my plans. Can anyone help me out?

Is there any reason the ATI Silencer 4 Rev. 2 won't fit on a AIW X800XT? Arctic Cooling's website specifies that the ATI Silencer 1 Rev. 2 fits the AIW X800XT but that options doesn't provide any cooling for the memory chips and the ATI Silencer 1 Rev. 2 doesn't even come with memory heat sinks! Thanks in advance!

The Arctic Cooling VGA Coolers get good reviews but I would question the quality control. I purchased a Silencer 1 (Rev. 2) and at the first start up, the fan short circuited inside its case. The fault current also caused the fan supply to fail permanently so that I could not run the stock fan either. I'm advised by the company who sold me the Arctic Cooling unit (Overclockers.co.uk), that fitting the Arctic Cooling fan invalidates the warranty for the graphic card, so there is no recourse for the damage caused by the faulty fan.

If you are thinking of installing an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer fan on an ATI card, be aware that that the Arctic Cooling fan may fail and cause permanent failure of the output to the VGA fan. I received the e-mail (below) from Arctic Cooling after a Silencer 1 Revision 2 fan failed on first start; I should add that the Arctic Cooling fan short circuited, not the ATI capacitor.

"Dear Mr. xxxxxx

The cap exploded on the ATI card because ATI uses their fan speed controller in an improper way. They don't provide the motor with a stable 12V voltage, they have voltage peaks over 25V. So far we were using a 16V cap, that should offer a good reserve, but not for some ATI boards. The Nvidia boards don't use this controller. ...

It is important to inform the customers that the failure comes from an
overvoltage from the ATI board. The spec tells actually for all fans in the PC a max. voltage of 12V. ATI seems to have recognized the problem and switched from the LM63 to the LM64 controller on their latest boards. Since the ATI fan speed controller doesn't offer a clean and stable voltage, I recommend all users to take the power for the directly from the PSU. In order to get 12V you have to take black and yellow, to get 5V black and red. The easiest way, buy a Y-cable for the PSU, cut one plug, remove isolation of black and yellow and do the same on your VGA board. Then just twist the corresponding cables into each other and isolate it with a tape.

Since we will remove the cap, we will get a clicking noise back as soon as there is an LM63 controller used on the ATI board. The solution is here exactly the same, get the power from a thermistor or the PSU directly. Unfortunately as far as I know, there are no adapter cables...

I know, its rediculous, even newegg doesnt carry it. So i sent in a request for them to carry it, maybe if they get a bunch of requests they will put it in stock. If you havent done that, do it, everybody that reads this do it too.

I want one of these pretty bad, my sapphire x800 gets up into the mid to upper 70s under load....its the only part of my system that gets super hot.

I know, its rediculous, even newegg doesnt carry it. So i sent in a request for them to carry it, maybe if they get a bunch of requests they will put it in stock. If you havent done that, do it, everybody that reads this do it too.

I want one of these pretty bad, my sapphire x800 gets up into the mid to upper 70s under load....its the only part of my system that gets super hot.

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I know its a different model but my ATI silencer 5 rev2 for r430 x800s does not fit on a sapphire board,my board is blue if that makes any difference. It took over an hour with a dremel to make it fit. It was worth the effort though.

I think you have the same card as me redlight. Its an r420, the silencer 5 is made for x850s (r430) and the other more expensive cards. How did you get the 5 to fit on yours? I'm half tempted to just buy the 5 and mod it too.

I think you have the same card as me redlight. Its an r420, the silencer 5 is made for x850s (r430) and the other more expensive cards. How did you get the 5 to fit on yours? I'm half tempted to just buy the 5 and mod it too.

I'm the guest that posted above you BTW.

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No mine is a pci-e r430 its just that sapphire decided to shuffle the board around,I had to cut out a little bit(an inch) of the very hard copperplate and cooling fins,only cause it was too much hassle to send it back. It works great anyway.